North Korean defector warns of 'Marxist' parallels between cancel culture and Kim regime
'My enemy used to be Kim Jong Un... but now so many Marxists are sending me death threats," Yeonmi Park says of cancel culture.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Following a recent interview with FoxNews.com, a North Korean woman who defected to the United States said the growing prominence of cancel culture and the left's intent on dividing people by race are stark reminders of the regime she escaped.
Yeonmi Park, 27, told "Hannity" on Monday that after being sold into sex slavery and being placed on dictator Kim Jong Un's "killing list," she escaped the Hermit Kingdom and trekked through the Gobi Desert to be able to flee to the United States, which she presumed was a free society where her expression would not be censored or worse.
She told host Sean Hannity that from an early age, North Korean children are instructed to equate the term and persona of "American" with "bastard." Nevertheless, she grew to secretly admire the U.S. from afar – from a nation where even hints of Western influence can be met with harsh criminal punishment.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"I fell in love with this country, this is such a wonderful country," she said, adding that soon after enrolling at Columbia University in New York City's Morningside Heights that reminders of the society she left came flooding back.
"Literally every professor was saying the problems that we have in today's world is because of White men [and] how they colonized Africa [and] Asia, that's how they mess up everything and they are the ones who needs to be blamed -- and I couldn't believe it."
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"Was I sitting in North Korea's classroom or in America's classroom? I couldn't believe why people were hating their own people that much."
Park said that her collegiate curriculum of censored speech in the name of "safe spaces" and instilled hatred of White Americans reminded her of the North Korean "American bastard" indoctrination.
"My enemy used to be Kim Jong Un: I have been on Kim Jong Un's killing list of people for many years because I spoke out, and my original family got punished but now ironically enough, so many Marxists and Communists and Maoists and Leninists are now are sending me death threats," she continued, calling the U.S. cancel culture a sad "irony."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}She added that she is afraid to speak her mind in public, especially on campus, because of the cancel culture.
"I crossed the Gobi desert to be free and now I thought I live in a country where I can say what I believe and have my freedom to think. However, now I have to constantly censor my speech because in the name off a safe place," she said.
"Columbia told us [what] we can't talk about and I am so concerned if America is not free, I think there is no place else left that is free -- that's why it's really alarming to me," said Park.
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She recalled that North Korea has as many as 50 different social classes that divide by minutiae as inconsequential as what one's great-great-grandfather did that may or may not have pleased the Kim regime or other entity.
That, she said, reminded her of the blanket indictment against White Americans that claim they are guilty for the sins of 19th Century southerners who owned slaves.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, also joined "Hannity" and suggested that Park travel around to college campuses to instead speak out about her experience in North Korea and the concern she expressed.
Fox News' Teny Sahakian contributed to this report.